


Upside Down

by ashtraythief



Series: Underneath 'verse [14]
Category: Supernatural RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Mob, Alternative Universe - FBI, Crimes & Criminals, Don't copy to another site, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-20
Updated: 2019-01-20
Packaged: 2019-10-13 10:55:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,689
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17486819
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ashtraythief/pseuds/ashtraythief
Summary: Linda Blair knew it was just a matter of time until the task force figured out she was the mole. When they finally do, she has a choice to make.





	Upside Down

**Author's Note:**

> Set between Turned Around and Way Down We Go.  
> Somehow, the main story got over 2k of kudos and I am just blown away by all your love and support. This story wouldn’t be here without any of you. So, in thanks, I will post two little snippets. The next timestamp is way too unfinished to be posted in the near future but I just want to say thanks and share the love that’s making my heart kinda burst. I hope you’ll enjoy this little insight into Chad and his FBI informant and how their story came to a close.  
> Many, many thanks to ilikaicalie and masja_17 for being awesome beta readers!

 

 

Wasn’t it funny, how just a few words could turn your world upside down?

_Will you marry me?_

_You’re pregnant._

_He’s dead._

They could announce all-encompassing happiness or devastating despair. This time, Linda only felt numb.

“We know.”

She didn’t try to deny it. Morgan had asked to see her and Kim, but Kim had sat down facing Linda, hand on her gun.

Morgan’s dark eyes gave nothing away. Linda stared at him, focused on a small patch of gray in his dark beard.

“I’m sorry.” Her voice was rough and scratchy and she blinked against the burning in her eyes. “I’m very sorry.”

“You’re _sorry_?” Kim spat out.

“Agent Rhodes.” Morgan held up a hand.

Kim shook her head. “Unbelievable.”

Morgan looked back at Linda and his expression was almost kind. “Why don’t you tell us, Agent Blair?”

Linda swallowed, folded her hands in her lap, unfolded them, turned her wedding band over. She’d never taken it off.

“There’s not much to tell.”

Morgan’s eyes turned soft. “I’m sure there is.”

Maybe there was. Linda could talk about the loneliness, about the gaping hole in her life that only her son could fill. Her son who was there and wasn’t there, who lived in his head, in a world Linda could rarely follow. She could talk about financial difficulties, about therapy, about the long sleepless hours, one side of the bed empty and cold. But she didn’t want to.

“They threatened my son.”

“Your son who’s now at Rainbow Valley Academy?”

Linda nodded. She’d hoped they wouldn’t make the connection, not with the mountain of medical debt she was still paying off, but Morgan and Agent Tal dug deep. Linda suspected that it wasn’t always legal but she didn’t have a leg to stand on.

“I think it was their cherry on top,” she said. “But they made it abundantly clear that he’d die if I didn’t cooperate.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Kim asked, and her face was almost anguished. She had two kids of her own.

“I thought about it,” Linda said. She had. But not for long. “But after Mark died… and Dylan doesn’t do well with change. He would have been miserable in witsec.”

“Well, it’s your only option now, I’m afraid,” Morgan said. “If, and only if, you can give us Padalecki.”

“He’ll kill me and Dylan.”

Kim leaned in and took Linda’s hand. “Linda, if you don’t cooperate, you will go to jail. Dylan will go into the foster system. If you cooperate, you have a shot at life with your son.”

Hot tears spilled down her cheek and she furiously wiped them away. How could they still be so blind? She’d never escape Padalecki.

“If you can just get a meeting with him,” Morgan started.

Linda let out a snort. “He wouldn't talk to me in a million years.”

“Then who was your contact?”

“A voice on a phone.”

“You never talked to anyone directly?” Morgan asked.

Linda shook her head. “In the beginning, I saw Murray a few times, when I was picking Dylan up from school. But only from a distance, he never threatened me in person.”

“Do you have any evidence?”

Linda shook her head. “I have to return the phone after every conversation to a designated drop point. When they want something from me, they bring me a new one.”

“They’re careful,” Kim said.

Morgan rubbed his hands over his face. “Of course they fucking are.” Then he looked back at Linda. “The next time they deliver a phone, we’re going to set up a trace and take it from there.”

“Yes, sir.”

“How do you get the phone?”

She couldn’t have them surveying the house. “They put it in Dylan’s backpack at school.”

“These motherfucknig bastards,” Kim bit out.

“Then we wait,” Morgan said. “And in the meantime, you tell us everything.”

“Yes, sir.”

This would be a long day.

 

When Linda came home that night, she turned the garden gnome around.

The next afternoon, she found Chad’s note in Dylan’s backpack. She burned it in the sink and threw the gnome in the trash and hoped Chad would understand.

He did. He broke into her house three days later. The night sky was coated in dull gray with a cover of cloud and he came in through a window at the side of the house.

“Oh my god.”

He rolled his eyes. “Relax, darling. The guys watching you are in the back alley and in the front. I broke into a garden five houses down. They never saw me coming.”

“So now what?”

Chad stepped over to her and took her hand. She realized she’d been shaking only when he gripped her tight. “I made you a promise, didn’t I?”

Linda nodded and wondered where he’d send her. Probably down south, maybe one of their cartel relations. Working for Padalecki was a lifetime job. She wondered if foster care wouldn’t be better for Dylan.

“How much time did you buy us?”

“I told them I get a phone from you every six to eight weeks when you want something. We should have a month, at least.”

Chad nodded. “Good. I’m getting you papers.”

“Where—

Chad pressed a finger to her lips. “It’s going to be a surprise. But as long as you don’t give them anything on us, you will be fine. There’s more than one place where you can work for us. And I promise, your boy will be fine.”

Her eyebrows shot up in surprise.

Chad scoffed. “What, did you think I would dump your kid with a Venezuelan drug cartel? I’m not a monster.”

She smiled weakly at his outrage. “No, you’re not.”

He nodded, then turned to leave. At the window he paused. “Hey, do you think this jacket is date material? From a woman’s perspective?”

Perplexed, Linda stared at his leather jacket. “Maybe unpop the collar,” she offered faintly.

Chad looked down, then sighed. “That’s what Jensen said,” he grumbled. Then he climbed out of the window and disappeared into the night.

 

 

Three weeks later, she got a call from the school nurse that Dylan was sick. He’d thrown up. Panicked, she left her mountain of paperwork at the office and raced down to the school. There was no parking spot close to the school building in the middle of the day, so she parked at the edge of the parking lot and jogged the rest of the way.

A few cars down, a short, dark-haired woman got out of a car and then stumbled into Linda.

“Sorry, sorry,” Linda said but when she wanted to pull away, the woman’s hand wrapped around her wrist.

“Agent Blair.”

Thrown, Linda focused on her face. It took her a second to place it because she hadn’t expected to run into Rachel Miner in her son’s parking lot. She hadn’t even considered this could be anything but her son getting sick.

Miner grinned at her. “It’s time to go, Agent.”

“My son.”

“Go get him. And then you get out of here.” Miner pressed a car key into Linda's hand and jerked her head towards the big SUV with the tinted windows. “Papers for you and your son are in the glove compartment, with a new phone and a new gun. Murray sends his regards. He said you should give him a call when you get there safe.”

Linda nodded and turned towards the school.

“Hey,” Miner said indignantly. “How do you think I'm getting out of here?”

Startled Linda turned around.

“You keys,” Miner said impatiently. “Besides, it’s going to be fun to send the Feds on a little goose chase.” She smiled widely, and her eyes sparkled in anticipation.

Mutely, Linda gave her her keys. She thought of all their things at home, the pictures, the fancy earrings Mark had given her for their five year anniversary.

“Go,” Miner said with an eye roll. “You’ll be fine.”

Linda nodded, then hurried towards the school.

Dylan was excited and nervous about leaving school in the middle of the day and while his teacher was confused, she understood when Linda made up a story about a surprise day off and wanting to spend time with her son.

She almost walked past the SUV before she remembered that Miner had driven off in her car. She buckled Dylan in and then opened the glove compartment.

Two sets of passports, one Canadian, the other in the dark burgundy of the European Union. Hope started blooming in her chest and she fumbled them out of the ziplock bag. The United Kingdom.

“Oh god.” The breath she'd been holding rushed out of her.

She still checked the note Chad had left. The name of a bar in Winnipeg, where she was supposed to ask for a guy called Lefty. Advice to avoid Minneapolis and take the route through Sioux Falls. Two plane tickets with names that matched the passports. Teresa and Dylan MacNeil, Canadian citizens. A number with a UK country code and a name, Tommy Warren. A ‘Make us proud. Pip pip cheerio, love’ with a tiny heart next to it.

Linda let out a shaky laugh, then she started the car. She had no idea what kind of connections Padalecki had in the UK, but she wouldn’t need to learn a new language at least.

A day later, Linda went shopping for their overseas travel. A mother and son traveling without luggage would look suspicious, so she bought herself a big dark suitcase and a smaller one with dinosaurs for Dylan. When she came out of the mall and wanted to put her purchases in the car, she opened the trunk for the first time. There was a bag in there, Mark’s bag. Her husband’s worn out leather duffel bag. She opened it and under a pile of lingerie—of course her lingerie, probably Chad’s idea of a joke—she found her jewelry box, a bunch of pictures from her house and folded between them Dylan’s picture from the fridge.

She blinked furiously. God fucking damn Chad. He made it really hard to hate him.

 

**Author's Note:**

> You can come find me on tumblr [here and on twitter ](http://ashtraythief.tumblr.com/)[here](https://twitter.com/ashtraythief) My ask box is always open.


End file.
